Posts Tagged ‘objective’

I once heard a liberal TV talking head say something that still horrifies me to this day. Rather than deny media bias, he essentially called leftwing bias objective, comparing entertaining conservative ideas with giving legitimacy to flat earth talk. With such a mindset, allowing conservatives to have any voice at all alongside liberalism isn’t “objective,” but ridiculous. And why be ridiculous and allow conservatives to have any voice whatsoever?

The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.

It doesn’t deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what’s real, of who’s accountable, of who is not accountable, of who’s real, who isn’t, who’s serious, who isn’t?

Such talk ought to be terrifying to liberals, who congratulate themselves on their open-mindedness. But the quintessential ingredient to liberals is abject hypocrisy, such that they can shut down any competing voice to their own at the same time they pat themselves on the back for their committment to free speech, etc. etc.

“In an election where the Republican candidate actually stands a chance against a weakened incumbent president, so far it is a couple of intellectual lightweights who are stealing the show.

Since Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll and Rick Perry entered the race, these two have been sucking up most of the media’s attention, mostly for saying stupid stuff. Like Bachmann‘s claim that as president she’ll bring gasoline down to $2 a gallon. Or Perry’s highly inappropriate shot at Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke saying that his actions could be “treasonous.”

Meanwhile, some Republicans, including Karl Rove, are suggesting that the former half-term dropout governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is going to join the race as well. Swell. Palin’s people are pushing back against the speculation, saying that anyone who claims to know about her plans is misleading the American people. But Palin has certainly been acting like a candidate, now hasn’t she? Showing up in Iowa during the straw poll voting, and…Iowa-themed political video released ahead of her Labor Day speech which is also scheduled to take place in Iowa. If Palin runs, we’ll have yet another MENSA candidate to join Bachmann and Perry. There is no doubt this three-some would consume the lion’s share of the media coverage.”

At the other end of the intellectual spectrum, there’s Ron Paul, who placed a very close second in the Iowa straw poll. He continues to talk sense – whether or not enough people are listening. There’s Newt Gingrich – love him or hate him, he’s a very bright man. There’s also Jon Huntsman, who says candidates like Bachmann and Perry are too far to the right and have “zero substance.” Testimony to his intellect right there.

He may be right, but I venture to say none of the three has a prayer against Curly, Moe and Larry. And that’s a sad commentary on the state of our politics, isn’t it?

Here’s the question: When it comes to presidential politics, why does America seem to be allergic to brains?

“Objectivity” looks like openly mocking every Republican who has any chance whatsoever of winning the GOP nomination.

And for what it’s worth, if Ron Paul, or Newt Gingrich, or Jon Huntsman actually pulled it out, Jack Cafferty and CNN would be attacking any of them, too. We saw it with our own eyes when RINO “maverick” (because he constantly rubbed the Republican base raw) John McCain won the nomination. Next thing you know they were doing this to him:

And too often Republicans have done just that – and then watched in amazement as the media went from praising the Republican as “the moderate whom the Democrats most fear” into a rightwing fanatic boogeyman.

On his syndicated program, Sunday, Chris Matthews slammed Rick Perry for being too “nasty” to Barack Obama. The liberal host also wondered if the fact that Perry is not a Mormon gives southerners a “permission slip” to like him.

Speculating on the Texas Governor’s popularity, Matthews theorized, “Do you think part of this southern appeal of this guy, who is to most of us this guy, Rick Perry, is he’s not a Mormon. He’s a Southern Baptist.”

The NBC anchor then suggested sinister motives behind his supporters: “And a lot of it is that permission slip people give themselves, ‘Oh, I’m not bigoted on race or religion, but I just like this guy.'”

On his self-titled program, Matthews said of the presidential candidate: “Some people like- apparently on the right- the fact that [Perry’s] so nasty against Obama.”

Just in the last week, Matthews has used his other program, Hardball, to compare Perry to segregationist Bull Connor.

He also suggested that the governor would have opposed integration. On Sunday, Matthews wondered if the GOP was the “nasty party.” Matthews certainly knows something about being nasty.

A transcript of the exchanges from the August 21, 2011 Chris Matthews Show can be found below:

10:10am EDT

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Do you think part of this southern appeal of this guy, who is to most of us this guy, Rick Perry, is he’s not a Mormon. He’s a Southern Baptist. And a lot of it is that permission slip people give themselves, ‘Oh, I’m not bigoted on race or religion, but I just like this guy.’

RICHARD STENGEL: Well, he checks all the boxes on the right and he doesn’t have to actually say all those conservative things all the time because people know he does that. So it’ll be fine with that. But I think it’s not so much about reaction to Mormonism, it’s a reaction to Obama. It makes the contrast with Obama seem much greater than it–than Romney does. Romney and Obama, if you blur a little bit, they can seem pretty similar.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

STENGEL: Perry and Obama, no.

MATTHEWS: Yeah. That’s very true. Some people like–apparently on the right–the fact that he’s so nasty against Obama.

JOHN HEILEMANN: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: They like that.

HEILEMANN: The Republican Party is a very conservative party now and a lot of people in the Republican Party don’t believe that Mitt Romney is a genuine conservative. That is always going to be a huge problem for him going forward.

MATTHEWS: Is it a nasty party?

HEILEMANN: Well, there is a piece of it that obviously is very angry. And just to your point about the middle, the middle–there are a lot of different parts of the middle. There are a lot of suburban mothers who are–moms who are not going to like Rick Perry. But there’s an angry downscale part of the middle and they are mad about the economic condition of the country.

In just the past month Chris Matthews has called Republicans “muggers,” “kidnappers” and “terrorists” and slandered Rick Perry as a supporter of segregation and called Perry “Bull Conners with a smile.”

So it’s really quite remarkable that a vile little weasel such as Chris Mathews would care that a politician not be “nasty,” given what a nasty little rodent he constantly has been toward Republicans in general and toward Rick Perry personally in particular.

But of course Chris Mathews is a hard-core Goebbels-style propagandist. And being “fair” or “objective” is always a mantle such people want to claim while they attack their political enemies with every word they speak or write.

The media coverage of Rupert Murdoch (whose media corporation owns Fox News among many other assets) reminds me of the days when George Bush was president and the media had someone to attack.

I have seen non-stop coverage of this “hacking scanda” (which has exactly WHAT to do with the USA?) since the developments first broke out. And there is a savage happy glee to the media “outrage” over the scandal. The media’s on the side of “journalistic outrage” and Rupert Murdoch is routinely depcited as unwilling to acknowledge any personal responsibility.

The media is on top of every new development. Every day marks a new front page story. Outrage abounds.

I haven’t seen coverage like this since the Bush days. Because that was the last time the media really went after somebody to try to take him down.

There was TWICE as much coverage of the Murdoch/”hacking scandal” as there was of the debt ceiling crisis in the New York Times, for example. At last this biased propaganda rag has a target they can really attack.

The aspect of the coverage that is now getting the most media flurry and fury is the question that Rupert Murdoch was asked:

And Murdoch’s flat “No” was followed by a renewed gasp of sheer outrage from the mainstream media machine.

If the mainstream media had any honesty or integrity whatsoever, they would be treating Rupert Murdoch exactly like they’re treating Barack Obama, or they would treat Barack Obama exactly like they’re treating Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s my question: has ANYONE in the mainstream media EVER ONCE asked President Obama the question, “Do you accept that ultimately, you are responsible for this whole fiasco?” related to the various “gunwalking” scandals in which government agents under Obama administration control allowed thousands of deadly firearms to get into the hands of criminal drug cartels in at least two foreign countries resulting in the murder of scores of citizens including American agents???

See my article on that here. This scandal is HUGE. There is NO WAY Obama couldn’t have had any input whatsoever into a massive federal program involving several federal agencies at multiple locations that put thousands of guns into the hands of criminals in at least two foreign countries.

WASHINGTON — The head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has admitted that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them — and he accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions.

How would Obama answer that question if some mainstream media propagandist actually asked him?

Should he not say that, as president of the United States and the commander in chief, he is clearly “ultimately responsible?” And should he not therefore resign from office to accept that responsibility?

STAYING PUT: Rupert Murdoch said he was the best person to clean up News Corp. Investors agreed.

BIG DAY: News Corp.’s stock had its best day since the phone-hacking scandal broke, rising more than 5 percent Tuesday while Murdoch and his son and deputy, James, testified before a committee of the British Parliament in London

But you know who looks far, far worse in this? The mainstream media, which once again proves they are hatchet men for anyone smacking of conservatism while mindlessly protecting their own leftwingers from the same sort of criticism they continually heap on their opponents all while claiming they are “objective.”

Allow me to first point out that the blatant media bias and distortion of news for the sake of ideology (propaganda) has been going on in America for a very long time at the hands of progressives. As I’ve said before:

As icon of leftwing journalists Walter Lippmann put it:

“News and truth are not the same thing.”

Which of course allows the mainstream media to misrepresent the truth in the guise of reporting “the news.”

Walter Lippmann described a “revolution” in “the practice of democracy” as “the manufacture of consent” has become “a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government.” This is a natural development when public opinion cannot be trusted: “In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out very sharply against self-centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality,” and are thus able to perceive “the realities.” These are the men of best quality, who alone are capable of social and economic management.

Which gives the mainstream media elite who stand above the rest of us mere mortals the right to serve as “gatekeepers,” and prevent the people from learning anything that might otherwise cause them to discover that conservatives have it right and liberals have it dead wrong.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

Because what is power if you can’t even manipulate the truth and shape it to serve your agenda? And if you’re a leftwing liberal progressive journalist – as basically 90 percent of journalists are today – what could be better than being one of the people “who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society” so you can “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country”???

That same warped elitest propagandist mindset is not only alive and well in “journalism” today; it IS journalism today. It is in fact the zeitgeist of the mainstream media. Which is what makes the mainstream media so truly dangerous to our republic and to the experiment in democracy itself.

According to now-disgraced NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, the rest of the elite media establishment is

﻿”terrified” of being the next NPR, Planned Parenthood or ACORN…and speculated that the goal of these stings is to instill fear. “It’s terrifying,” Schiller said, that’s their “objective.”

Schiller the progressive liberal shill also said to a question about how concerned she was about hidden video cameras that could reveal the TRUTH of what is going on inside these corrupt organizations:

Extremely concerned. I think it’s an abomination. I mean, this kind of tactic — for somebody to attach the word, some are calling this a form of journalism, this is not journalism. You don’t ensnare people; you don’t entrap people with hidden cameras; you don’t pretend to be somebody who you’re not. This is, I don’t know what this is, but it’s got nothing to do with anything that resembles the journalism that I know. And it’s very troubling, it’s very troubling and I think, I worry in particular about the impact it will have I think because of this latest ACORN and Planned Parenthood had come before this, I think with this NPR sting, I don’t know what else to call it, uh, I think that now everybody that I have talked to in the media is on the lookout thinking, “Who’s next? Are we next?” And I worry about how that will have an impact on people’s behavior because they are in fear that every conversation, everything they do might be, you know, not what it appears to be. It’s terrifying.

Vivian Schiller is appalled. And she damn well should be.

Until now, the only legitimate targets of journalism were pretty much conservatives and Christians. It is a crime against the “journalism that she knows” to target liberal people or organizations. The media was free to hide its own motives even as it used its power to destroy everyone else by exposing theirs. And that status quo was how things were supposed to remain forever, as far as shills like Schiller were concerned.

Vivian Schiller indignantly says, “you don’t pretend to be somebody who you’re not.” And I would agree with that. Which is why I ask of Vivian Schiller, NPR and every other mainstream media outlet, “How DARE you deceitfully pretend to be “objective” when you were never anything even remotely close to being objective?

Let’s look at the groups that Vivian Schiller said the elite media doesn’t want to join.

NPR:

The teflon armor protecting NPR as somehow being “objective” began to seriously crack when they fired Juan Williams (the ONLY black man at the virtually all-white NPR, for what it’s worth) for stating his opinion when he said that he got a little worried when he boarded a plane and saw a bunch of Muslims. Their reasoning against this violation of far-leftwing politcal correctness was that journalists should only state facts, not their opinions. And Vivian Schiller suggested that Juan Williams needed to see a psychiatrist.

It didn’t matter that there were numerous counter-examples to NPR’s self-righteous “just the facts” posturing. An article entitled “NPR’s Double Standard Exposed” has them. My favorite was this one:

One of the most notorious liberal haters on NPR is Nina Totenberg. She is the legal affairs correspondent. In 1995, she said that is there was “retributive justice” in the world, the late North Caroline Senator Jesse Helms would get AIDS or his grandchildren would get AIDS. She still has her job.

But her liberal expression of hate toward Jesse Helms was clearly “just the facts, ma’am.” And hers was only one of about ten blatant examples of NPR hypocrisy in its reasoning in firing Juan Williams.

Ron Schiller went on to lament what he called an “anti-intellectual” component of the Republican Party.

“Liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives,” he said.

But that’s okay, because you can count on the objective journalists over at NPR to treat the “anti-intellectual” “seriously racist” conservatives the same as those “more educated, fair and balanced liberals.”

New video released Thursday afternoon indicates National Public Radio intended to accept a $5 million donation from fictitious Muslim Brotherhood front group Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust – and that the publicly funded radio network might have helped MEAC make the donation anonymously to protect it from a federal government audit.

When a man posing as Ibrahim Kasaam asked, “It sounded like you were saying NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?” NPR’s senior director of institutional giving, Betsy Liley, responded, “I think that is the case, especially if you are anonymous. I can inquire about that.”

Which takes us full circle: because how DARE Juan Williams fear terrorists when terrorists might be NPR’s best donors (at least after George Soros)???

That slime like Vivian Schiller would call ANYONE an “abomination” is a sick, twisted joke. If she wants to see what an “abomination” looks like, she should spend a whole lot less time labelling other people and a whole lot more time looking in a mirror.

Planned Parenthood:

Remember, the people who expose the TRUTH about these totally righteous organizations are “abominations” to someone like NPR’s very recently ex-CEO Vivian Schiller. Let’s see how “righteous” Planned Parenthood is.

This is the virtuous group whose exposure Vivian Schiller – as the CEO of an objective organization of journalists – believes is immoral to expose:

The Advocate released a transcript of a taped conversation between an actor posing as a white racist and wanting to make a donation, and a woman identified as Autumn Kersey, vice president of marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho.

The transcript reads:

Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?Planned Parenthood: Absolutely.A: Like the black community for example?PP: Certainly.A: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?PP: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.A: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.PP: Yes, absolutely.A: And we don’t, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.PP: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.A: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college.PP: All right. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited, and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

Lila Rose said the actor asked each PP branch contacted about lowering “the number of black people,” and none expressed concern about the racist reason for the donation.

Last spring, in another sting on Planned Parenthood, Lila posed as a 15-year-old seeking an abortion at a PP abortuary in Santa Monica, California.

Lila was accompanied by James O’Keefe, who acted as her 23-year-old boyfriend. In a recorded conversation, the employee encouraged Rose to invent a birthday to allow Planned Parenthood to avoid reporting a case of statutory rape.

“If you’re 15, we have to report it. If you’re not, if you’re older than that, then we don’t need to,” the employee said. “Okay, but if I just say I’m not 15, then it’s different?” Rose asked. The employee responded, “You could say 16…well, just figure out a birth date that works. And I don’t know anything.”

But, of course, you can’t forget that Vivian Schiller fired and then called mentally disturbed her only token black. So I’m sure you can readily understand just why Vivian Schiller would think a thoroughly racist enterprise such as Planned Parenthood would be so legitimate. Even if that racist organization also happens to be in the business of protecting child molesters.

And that’s not all there is to say about Planned Parenthood, by any means. There’s also the fact that they lied and cheated their way into government funding by falsely claiming they performed female health services such as mammograms when in proven fact they don’t.

What was that thing you said about “you don’t pretend to be somebody who you’re not” again, Vivian? How about pretending to care for women when all you want to do is profit from murdering their innocent babies? How about pretending to care for women so you can illegitimately suck up government money? Other than the fact that you are a truly vile human being and a disgrace to genuine journalism, why doesn’t that “pretending” bother you?!?!?

The people who run Planned Parenthood belong in prison for a whole hosts of reasons.

But the only people who are an “abomination” are the people who exposed the moral monstrosity of Planned Parenthood when the “journalists” at NPR would never have dreamed of doing such an “un-journalistic” thing.

The mainstream media needs to demonize those organizations that expose how truly vile and evil outfits like NPR and Planned Parenthood are, so that we can go back to the status quo in which only conservatives and Christians needed to fear having something they did wrong blared all over the planet.

Two more ACORN officials were fired Friday after a second video surfaced showing staffers in the community organizers’ Washington office offering to help a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute acquire illegal home loans that would help them set up a brothel.

The firings came less than 24 hours after another pair of ACORN officials from the group’s Baltimore office were canned for instructing the “pimp” and “prostitute” how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 “very young” girls from El Salvador that pair said they wanted to import to work as child prostitutes.

Both of the encounters were videotaped on a hidden camera wielded by 25-year-old independent filmmaker James O’Keefe, posing as the pimp — tapes that have ignited calls for investigations of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

That was the “second” such firing of an ACORN official just to show the first one wasn’t a fluke.

And then there was still another example of ACORN officials working to help a pimp and a prostitute illegally obtain government assistance to purchase a house so they could set up a brothel with underage sex illegal immigrant sex slaves.

And, remember, this is a noble outfit to a Josephine Goebbels such as Vivian Schiller; it’s only the people who expose ACORN’s corruption when an NPR would never do so in a billion years who are “abominations.”

And let me remind you that these three incredibly corrupt and immoral organizations had operated for years without the mainstream media so much as trying to turn over one rock to expose these disgusting disease-spreading worms.

It is beyond galling that Vivian Schiller would be angry only at the people who finally exposed them when despicable “journalists” such as the George Soros-bought-and-paid-for media frauds at National Public Radio would never have dreamed of doing so.

Liberals who have come to control the press have for decades used their power to protect their friends and punish their enemies. And they are beyond outraged that they are losing that power to interlopers such as Fox News and independent citizen reporters who are actually daring to expose the truth that the mainstream media has successfully kept covered up for years and years until now.

Vivian Schiller reminds me of a poem that I now paraphrase:

“They served their god so faithfully and wellThat now they see him face to face in hell.”

One day you and virtually every single other mainstream media journalist will burn in hell, Vivian Schiller. Until then, I hope you all live in absolute terror that people like James O’Keefe and Lila Rose will continue to expose you as the societal maggots feeding on the carcass of America that you truly are.

Liberals think that the title of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is an oxymoron. They’re wrong. Goldberg himself writes:

“For more than sixty years, liberals have insisted that the bacillus of fascism lies semi-dormant in the bloodstream of the political right. And yet with the notable and complicated exceptions of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom, no top-tier American conservative intellectual was a devotee of Nietzsche or a serious admirer of Heidegger. All major conservative schools of thought trace themselves back to the champions of the Enlightenment–John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Burke–and none of them have any direct intellectual link to Nazism or Nietzsche, to existentialism, nihilism, or even, for the most part, Pragmatism. Meanwhile, the ranks of the leftwing intellectuals are infested with ideas and thinkers squarely in the fascist tradition. And yet all it takes is the abracadabra word “Marxist” to absolve most of them of any affinity with these currents. The rest get off the hook merely by attacking bourgeois morality and American values–even though such attacks are themselves little better than a reprise of fascist arguments” [page 175].

“Foucault’s “enterprise of Unreason,” Derrida’s tyrannical logocentrism, Hitler’s “revolt against reason.” All fed into a movement that believes action is more important than ideas. Deconstructionism, existentialism, postmodernism, Pragmatism, relativism: all these ideas had the same purpose–to erode the iron chains of tradition, dissolve the concrete foundations of truth, and firebomb the bunkers where the defenders of the ancient regime still fought and persevered. These were ideologies of the “movement.” The late Richard Rorty admitted as much, conflating Nietzsche and Heidegger with James and Dewey as part of the same grand project” [Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, page 176].

It turns out that most of the moral and philosophical assumptions of liberalism have been shared by not only the Marxists, but the Nazis as well. NAZI stood for “National Socialist German Workers Party,” and was merely a rival brand of the clearly leftist political ideology of socialism. And given the fact that Marxism was in fact every bit as totalitarian and murderous as Nazism, in hindsight it seems rather bizarre that “Marxist” was ever an abracadabra word that the American left was willing to bear to begin with.

The purpose of this article is to explore how the foundational ideas that liberals uphold as being the opposite of fascism in fact actually fed the monster of fascist Nazism, and how the modern American left continue to fall prey to fascist premises and outcomes to this very day.

It is particularly interesting that the supposedly highly individualistic and influential school of thought known as “existentialism” became so ensnared by fascism and Nazism. On the surface, existentialism would seem to be the very polar opposite of fascism and Nazism. After all, a philosophy of radical freedom centered in the individual would surely be incompatible with a totalitarian social system that denies political liberty in the name of the community. One would assume that existentialism would be a philosophy of rebellion against all such external authority. And yet the Nazis quoted Frederich Nietzsche at great length in support of their ideology (see also here). Martin Heidegger, one of the foremost existentialist thinkers in history, turned out to have been a proud member of the Nazi Party. And even famed existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre – who fought to resist fascism in his Nazi-occupied France during WWII – ultimately merely chose another totalitarian ideology in its place (Sartre identified himself as a Marxist and a Maoist).

Georg Lukács observed (in The Destruction of Reason, 1954, page 5) that tracing a path to Hitler involved the name of nearly every major German philosopher since Hegel: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthy, Simmel, Scheler, Heidegger, Jaspers, Weber. Rather than merely being amoral monsters, the Nazis emerged out of a distinguished liberal secular humanist intellectual tradition.

Max Weinreich documented in Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People, an exhaustive study of the complicity of German intellectuals with the Nazi regime. Far from opposing the Nazi regime, we find that German academia actively provided the intellectual justification for Nazi fascism as well as the conceptual framework for the Holocaust. Weinreich does not claim that German scholars intended the Holocaust, but he argues that the Holocaust would not have been possible without them.

He asks, “Did they administer the poison? By no means; they only wrote the prescription.”

How could such a thing happen?

Very easily, it turns out.

The existentialists (along with the secular humanists and the liberals), deny the transcendent, deny objective truth, and deny the objective morality that derive from transcendence and objective truth. Rather than any preordained system – whether moral or theological – existentialist anchored meaning not to any ideals or abstractions, but in the individual’s personal existence. Life has no ultimate meaning; meaning is personal; and human beings must therefore create their own meaning for themselves.

One should already begin to see the problem: since existentialism, by its very nature, refuses to give objective answers to moral or ideological questions, a particular existentialist might choose to follow either a democrat or totalitarian ideology – and it frankly doesn’t matter which. All that matters is that the choice be a genuine choice.

Existentialists didn’t merely acknowledge this abandonment of transcendent morality, they positively reveled in it. In his book St. Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre celebrated the life of a criminal. Genet was a robber, a drug dealer, and a sexual deviant. By all conventional moral standards, Genet was an evil man. But for Sartre, even ostensibly evil actions could be moral if they were performed in “good faith.” And since Sartre’s Genet consciously chose to do what he did, and took responsibility for his choices and his actions, he was a saint in existentialist terms.

And the problem becomes even worse: by rejecting the concepts of transcendence, objective meaning, truth, and moral law, and by investing ultimate authority in the human will (i.e. Nietzsche’s “will to power”, Hitler’s “triumph of the will”), existentialism played directly into the hands of fascism — which preached the SAME doctrines. If fascism can be defined as “violent and practical resistance against the process of transcendence,” as Ernst Nolte defined it, then it’s affinities with existentialism are crystal clear. The two movements became part of the same stream of thought.

Modern Nietzsche followers argue that Nietzsche was not a racial anti-Semite. For the sake of argument maybe he wasn’t; but he was without any question an intellectual anti-Semite, who attacked the Jews for their ideas and their ethics — particularly as they contributed to Western civilization and to Christianity (which he also actively despised). And in addition to Nietzsche’s intellectual anti-Semitism was his utter contempt for any form of abstractions — particularly as they related to the transcendental categories of morality and reason. Nietzsche maintained that abstraction of life resulted from abstraction of thought. And he blamed Christianity – which he rightly blamed as a creation of the Jews – for the denial of life manifested in Christian morality.

And, unlike most pseudo-intellectuals of today, Nietzsche was consistent: in his attack against Christianity, he attacked Judeo-Christian morality. He attacked the Christian value of other-centered love, and argued that notions of compassion and mercy favored the weak and the unfit, thereby breeding more weakness. Don’t you dare think for a single nanosecond that Hitler didn’t take the arguments of this beloved-by-liberals philosopher and run down the field with them toward the death camps.

The Nazis aligned themselves not only against the Jews but against the the Judeo-Christian God and the Judeo-Christian morality the Jews represented. A transcendent lawgiving God, who reveals His moral law on real tablets of stone for mankind to follow, was anathema to the fascists. They argued that such transcendence alienates human beings from nature and from themselves (i.e., from their own genuine choices). The fascist intellectuals sought to forge a new spirituality of immanence, focused upon nature, on human emotions, and on the community. The fascists sought to restore the ancient pre-Christian consciousness, the ancient mythic sensibility in the form of the land and the blood, in which individuals experience unity with nature, with each other, and with their own deepest impulses.

Gene Edward Veith in his book Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian worldview writes:

The fascist rebellion against transcendence restored the ancient pagan consciousness. With it came barbarism, a barbarism armed with modern technology and intellectual sophistication. The liquidation of the transcendent moral law and “Jewish” conscience allowed the resurgence of the most primitive and destructive emotions, the unleashing of original sin (page 14).

Nietzsche argued that God is dead, and Hitler tried to finish Him off by eradicating the Jews. What is less known is that he also planned to solve the “church problem” after the war. Hitler himself said:

“The war is going to be over. The last great task of our age will be to solve the church problem. It is only then that the nation will be wholly secure” [From Hitler’s Tabletalk (December 1941), quoted in The Nazi Years: A Documentary History, ed. Joachim Remak, 1990, page 105].

Hitler boasted that “I have six divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn’t prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls.” And Himmler said, “Men who can’t divest themselves of manners of previous centuries, and scoff and sling mud at things which are ‘holy’ and matters of belief to others, once and for all do not belong in the SS.”

With the creed “God is dead” and the resulting “death of God,” Nietzsche predicted that energizing conflict and revolution would reemerge in a great wave of nihilism. Human beings would continue to evolve, he said, nodding to Darwinism. And man would ultimately give way to Superman. And Nietzsche said that this Superman would not accept the anachronistic abstract, transcendental meanings imposed by disembodied Judeo-Christian rationalism or by a life-denying religion. Rather, this Superman would CREATE meaning for himself and for the world as a whole.

The Superman, according to Nietzsche, would be an artist who could shape the human race – no longer bound by putrefying and stultifying and stupefying transcendence – to his will. “Man is for him an un-form, a material, an ugly stone that needs a sculptor,” he wrote. Such a statement did not merely anticipate the Darwinist-based Nazi eugenics movement. It demonstrated how the exaltation of the human will could and would lead not to general liberty, as one might have expected, but to the control of the many by the elite — with those of the weaker in will being subjugated to the will of the Supermen.

Nietzsche’s new ethic became the rationale for all the Nazi atrocities that would follow. As Nietzsche himself put it, “The weak and the failures shall perish: the first principle of OUR love of man. And they shall even be given every possible assistance. What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and the weak: Christianity” (in “The Anti-Christ” in Portable Nietzsche, p. 570). We see here also the exemplification of yet another legacy left behind by Nietzsche that was picked up by the Nazi and afterward by secular humanist atheists today: the Nietzschean attitude of flippant, sarcastic contempt for all the ordinary human values that had resulted from Judeo-Christianity.

One of the ordinary human values that had resulted from Judeo-Christianity was the fundamental sanctity of human life. But the Nazis had their own concept – Lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”). And nearly fifty million of the most innocent and helpless human beings have perished as a result of an existentialist philosophy that survived the fall of the Nazis in liberal thought, which celebrates pro-existentialist “pro-choice” above human life.

Nietzsche’s philosophy underlies the thought of all the later existentialists, and the darker implications of his thought proved impossible to ignore.

And Martin Heidegger, in his own personal choice to commit himself to National Socialism, did not ignore them.

There is more that needs to be understood.

Martin Heidegger invoked Nietzsche in his 1933 Rectoral Address, in his speech entitled, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” in which he articulated his commitment to the integration of academia with National Socialism. He began by asking, if Nietzsche is correct in saying that God is dead, what are the implications for knowledge?

As Heidegger explained, if God is dead, there is no longer a transcendent authority or reference point for objective truth. Whereas classical thought, exemplified by the Greeks, could confidently search for objective truth, today, after the death of God, truth becomes intrinsically “hidden and uncertain.” Today the process of questioning is “no longer a preliminary step that is surmounted on the way to the answer and thus to knowing; rather, questioning itself becomes the highest form of knowing.”

Heidegger’s conclusion became accepted to the point of becoming a commonplace of contemporary liberal thought: that knowledge is a matter of process, not content. With the death of God, there is no longer any set of absolutes or abstract ideals by which existence must be ordered. Such “essentialism” is an illusion; and knowledge in the sense of objective, absolute truth must be challenged. The scholar is not one who knows or searches for some absolute truth, but the one who questions everything that pretends to be true.

Again, one would think that such a skeptical methodology would be highly incompatible with fascism, with its practice of subjecting people to an absolute human authority. And yet this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of fascism. In fact, Heidegger’s Rectoral Address was warmly endorsed by the National Socialists for a very good reason: the fascists saw themselves as iconoclasts, interrogating the old order and boldly challenging all transcendent absolutes.

We find that in this same address in which Heidegger asserts that “questioning itself becomes the highest form of knowing,” Heidegger went on to advocate expelling academic freedom from the university:

“To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the university.”

Heidegger argued that the traditional canons of academic freedom were not genuine but only negative, encouraging “lack of concern” and “arbitrariness.” Scholars must become unified with each other and devote themselves to service. In doing so, he stated, “the concept of the freedom of German students is now brought back to it’s truth.”

Now, the claim that freedom would somehow emerge when academic freedom is eliminated might be sophistry of the worst kind, but it is not mere rhetorical doublespeak. Why? Because Heidegger was speaking existentially, calling not for blind obedience, but for a genuine commitment of the will. Freedom was preserved because “to give oneself the law” was a voluntary, freely chosen commitment. Academic freedom as the disinterested pursuit of truth shows “arbitrariness,” parking of the old essentialist view that truth is objective and transcendent. The essentialist scholar is detached and disengaged, showing “lack of concern,” missing the sense in which truth is ultimately personal, a matter of the will, demanding personal responsibility and choice. In the new order, the scholar will be fully engaged in service to the community. Academic freedom is alienating, a function of the old commitment to moral and intellectual absolutes.

And what this meant in practice could be seen in the Bavarian Minister of Culture’s directive to professors in Munich, that they were no longer to determine whether something “is true, but whether it is in keeping with the direction of the National Socialist revolution” (Hans Schemm, quoted in Hermann Glaser, The Cultural Roots of National Socialism, tr. Ernest A. Menze, 1978, p. 99).

I point all of the above out to now say that it is happening all over again, by intellectuals who unknowingly share most of the same tenets that made the horror possible the last time.

We live in a society in which too many of our judges have despised a system of objective laws from an objective Constitution and have imposed their own will upon both. Judicial activist judges have largely driven transcendent religion and the transcendent God who gives objective moral laws out of the public sphere.

Today, we live in a society that will not post the Ten Commandments – the epitome of transcendent divinely-ordained moral law – in public schools. And why not? Because judges ruled that:

“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments,” which, the Court said, is “not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”

The climate that led to fascism and to Nazism in Germany did not occur overnight, even though the final plunge may have appeared to be such to an uninformed observer. It occurred over a period of a half a dozen decades or so, with the transcendent and objective moral foundations having been systematically torn away. And after that degree of cancer had been reached, it only took the right leader or the right event to plunge the world into madness.

The Obama campaign has always had it pretty easy with the press. It wasn’t too long ago that his extravaganza trip to Europe and Iraq were covered by the anchors of all three major networks. John McCain couldn’t have PAID Brian Williams, Katie Couric, or Charles Gibson to accompany him on any of his trips to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs has followed the puppydog-like way the media has followed Obama:

The “big three” broadcast networks – NBC, ABC and CBS – remain captivated with Sen. Barack Obama, according to a study of campaign coverage released Tuesday by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

Numbers tell all: 61 percent of the stories that appeared on the networks between Aug. 23 and Sept. 30 were positive toward the Democratic Party. In contrast, just 39 percent of the stories covering Republicans were favorable.

“After a brief flirtation with Sarah Palin, the broadcast networks have returned to their first love: Barack Obama,” said Robert Lichter, the center’s president.

“John McCain has not been so lucky. He’s gotten bad coverage from the beginning. It has never varied from that,” Mr. Lichter added.

Unfortunately, the Washington Times decided this October 13, 2008 story titled, “Study: Big Three Networks Still Fixated On ‘First Love’ Obama” harmed “the One” more than they liked; they purged it. But the fact of media bias for Obama remains whether stories pointing to it are purged or not. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly articles critical of Democrats get taken down, while articles critical of Republicans stay up for years.

The Media Research Center is another media watchdog that has noticed that the media bias in favor of Barack Obama is pretty much disgusting:

A comprehensive analysis of every evening news report by the NBC, ABC and CBS television networks on Barack Obama since he came to national prominence concludes coverage of the Illinois senator has “bordered on giddy celebration of a political ‘rock star’ rather than objective newsgathering.”

The new study by the Media Research Center, which tracks bias in the media, is summarized on the organization’s website, where the full report also has been published. It reveals that positive stories about Obama over that time outnumbered negative stories 7-1, and significant controversies such as Obama’s relationship with a convicted Chicago man have been largely ignored.

Rich Noyes, the research director for the MRC, told WND Obama has “always received very positive press from the national media,” and that was a “huge boost to anyone seeking a national political career.”

That’s contrary to the normal “default position” for reporters of being slightly cynical and a little skeptical, he said. It is “not the normal professional approach you see in journalists,” he said.

And the most recent survey from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Winning the Media Campaign: How the Press Reported the 2008 Presidential General Election” – Sep 6 – Oct 16, tells us that:

In short, Obama gets nearly 3 times more positive coverage than McCain, while McCain gets nearly twice as much negative coverage as Obama. Does that sound fair to you? How is McCain supposed to run against that?

It gets even WORSE for Sarah Palin, believe it or not; she received only 6% positive coverage, and 64% negative coverage!

Realize that John McCain has been routinely portrayed as “going negative.” Aside from the fact that this is patently false – according to yet another media watchdog, the Wisconsin Advertising Project based at the University of Wisconsin – just what on earth is John McCain supposed to do? The media is literally doing the lion’s share of Obama’s dirty work for him by negatively covering John McCain under the guise of “news.” And then that same media attacks him when he goes negative!

Last week Colin Powell – in a powder puff ‘Meet the Press‘ interview – officially endorsed Barack Obama (after officially being one of his ‘advisors’ for months). The kinds of questions I would have loved to see asked of Colin Powell, such as:

Mr. Secretary, given the fact that you were the man who made the case for war with Iraq at the United Nations – and given the fact that the man you are endorsing has called the war you supported one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in history – are you acknowledging your own personal incompetence. Are you acknowledging that your judgment should not be trusted?

Mr. Secretary, given the fact that the man you are endorsing has opposed the surge strategy conceived of and carried out by General Petraeus as one that would fail, and which would actually INCREASE sectarian violence, are you stating for the record your belief that General Petraeus was wrong, and that Barack Obama was right? Are you claiming that the surge has NOT been a military success? Should we take this as further evidence of your own personal incompetence and poor judgment?

Somehow never got asked. Too bad Colin Powell got to talk with pompous liberal Tom Brokaw rather than having to deal with the likes of a Barbara West.

The amazing thing is that the Associated Press article by Nedra Pickler that acknowledged that the Obama had scrubbed his website of his criticism of the surge strategy has itself been scrubbed. Fortunately I have preserved the article here. Kind of reminds me of the great work done by the “Ministry of Truth” in George Orwell’s 1984.

So, what happens when some courageous journalist – looking at the total onslaught of pro-Obama bias and downright propaganda – decides to finally ask the Obama-Biden campaign some tough but legitimate questions?

WEST: I know you’re in North Carolina trying to help get out the vote but aren’t you embarassed by the blatant attempts to register phony voters by ACORN, an organization that Barack Obama has been tied to in the past?

BIDEN: I am not embarassed by it. We are not tied to it. We have not paid them one single penny to register a single solitary voter. We have the best GOTV operation in modern history. We’ve registered the voters ourselves and so there is no relationship. So I am embarassed for anybody in ACORN who went out there and registered somebody who shouldn’t be registered. I’m not embarrassed by our campaign because we haven’t paid ACORN a single penny to register a single voter.

WEST: But in the past, Sen. Obama was a community organizer for ACORN. He was an attorney for ACORN and certainly in the Senate, he has been a benefactor for ACORN.

BIDEN: How has he been a benefactor for ACORN? He was a community organizer. John McCain stood before ACORN not long ago and complimented them on the great work they did. Does that make John McCain complicit in any mistake that ACORN made? C’mon. Let’s get real.

WEST: Okay, moving onto the next question. Sen. Obama famously told Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread his wealth around. Gallup polls show 84% of Americans prefer government focus on improving financial conditions and creating more jobs in the U.S. as opposed to taking steps to distributing wealth. Isn’t Sen. Obama’s statement a potentially crushing political blunder?

BIDEN: Absolutely not. The only person that’s spread the wealth around has been George Bush and John McCain’s tax policy. They have devastated the middle class. For the first time since the 1920’s, the top 1% make 21% of the income in America. That isn’t the way it was before George Bush became president. All we want is the middle class to have a fighting chance. That’s why we focus all of our efforts on restoring the middle class and giving them a tax break. And John McCain doubles down on Bush’s tax cuts and gives a $300 billion in tax cuts for the largest companies in America. We don’t think that’s the way to do it. We think give the middle class a break. That’s the way to do it.

WEST: You may recognize this famous quote. From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. That’s from Karl Marx. How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?

BIDEN: Are you joking? Is this a joke?

WEST: No.

BIDEN: Is that a real question?

WEST: It’s a real question.

BIDEN: He is not spreading the wealth around. He is talking about giving the middle class an opportunity to get back the tax breaks they used to have. What has happened just this year is that the people making $1.4 million a year, the wealthiest 1%, good, decent American people, are gonna get an $87 billion tax cut. A new one on top of the one from last year. We think that the people getting that tax break and not redistribute the wealth up, should be the middle class. That’s what we think. It’s a ridiculous comparison with all due respect.

WEST: Now you recently said “Mark my words. It won’t be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.” But what worries many people is your caveat asking them to stand with him because it won’t be apparent that he got it right. Are you forewarning the American people that something might not get done and that America’s days as the world’s leader might be over?

BIDEN: No, I’m not at all. I don’t know who’s writing your questions but let me make it clear to you. The fact of the matter is that everyone with knowledge, from Colin Powell on down, the next president, whether it’s John McCain or Barack Obama. The reason is our weakened position in the world. We’re stretched thin throughout the world. Our economy is in freefall right now. And they’re gonna be tested. And the point I was making is that Barack Obama is better prepared to handle any crisis than John McCain…

The first time that someone actually asks real questions, the Obama campaign whines that the interview was combative. That’s what happens when they’re used to getting softball questions. It’s great to hear West isn’t just sitting back and taking it. Here’s her response:

“I have a great deal of respect for him. I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Obama. We are given four minutes of a satellite window for these interviews. Four precious minutes. I got right down to it and, yes, I think I asked him some pointed questions. These are questions that are rolling about right now and questions that need to be asked. I don’t think I was rude or inconsiderate to him. I think I was probing and maybe tough. I can’t believe that in all of his years in politics, and all of his campaigning and such, that he hasn’t run into some tough questions before. He’s certainly up to it in giving good answers.”

Well, apparently he isn’t. And apparently you’re not allowed to ask the Obama campaign’s tough questions.

“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

So when Biden said of Barack Obama, “He’s not spreading the wealth around,” he’s pretty much lying through his dazzlingly bleached teeth. It’s too bad that Barbara West didn’t have four more minutes.

One would have to be incredibly determined to find a better 4-word definition of Marxism than “spread the wealth around.” Biden’s response to an incredibly legitimate question was to lie, and then express his annoyance that anyone would dare to ask him a legitimate question.

For the record, the Obama campaign paid $820,000 to ACORN for “lighting” even as they were becoming involved in voter fraud in 15 states (and counting). Biden says the campaign didn’t “give a single penny to ACORN.” He’s right; they gave 82 MILLION pennies to them! And citing the fact that John McCain once gave a speech to ACORN as a dodge for Obama’s years of involvement with ACORN doesn’t merit anything but contempt.

In any event, the Obama campaign didn’t like being asked hard questions – like McCain and Palin get damn near every time they do ANY interview (including ABC’sthe View), so the arrogant and imperious Obama campaign arrogantly and imperiously decided to punish WFTV for West’s transgression:

The Obama camp then killed a WFTV interview with Biden’s wife Jill, according to an Orlando Sentinel blog.

“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign, according to the Sentinel.

Of course, given the trend, overly-specific articles of this interview will likely be shortly scrubbed by the same Ministry of Truth that has already been hard at work in this campaign, anyway…

The really funny (in a sick, twisted, ironic way) thing about the Obama campaign is that they are willing to negotiate with the leaders of rogue terrorist states without preconditions, but they aren’t willing to talk with reporters who will ask them legitimate questions.

Under a Pelosi-Reid-dominated and even filibuster proof Congress, you won’t have to worry about that kind of interview much longer. Conservative thought will be criminalized and punished under the Fairness Doctrine. Nancy Pelosi has already said as much. People who wish to punish free speech under the guise of “fairness” should be frightening. But we see just how intolerant Democrats are to free speech given knowledge of the past.